British Psychoanalytic Association

14/02/2026

"The reasons for psychoanalysis’s contemporary resurgence mirror those that drove its earlier waves of popularity. In times of political upheaval, state-sponsored violence and collective trauma, psychoanalysis offers tools for making sense of the seemingly senseless. It provides a framework for understanding how authoritarian impulses take root in individual psyches and spread through societies."

Freud’s insights into trauma, repression and the unconscious are finding new relevance and millions of followers.

12/02/2026

“To come back to this idea of ‘groaning’ – I really like it because I think it’s a good description of the work we do, but particularly because it refers to Antonio Ferro’s concept of the absorbency of the frame, which I think is another way of referring to it, that the frame can take a little give and take, that there’s something organic about it. It has a structure, but it’s absorbent, it can move, it’s alive. So that is a very important concept. I think a lot of younger analysts or psychotherapists who want to be inspired by psychoanalysis don’t let themselves feel comfortable letting things happen first before they try and immediately intervene and feel that they have to have some kind of magical response to it.”

Listen here:

“To come back to this idea of ‘groaning’ – I really like it because I think it’s a good description of the work we do, but particularly because it refers to Antonio Ferro’s concept of the absorbency of the frame, which I think is another way of referring to it, that the frame can take a ...

09/02/2026

Join BPA psychanalyst Sarah Miller this Wednesday, 11 February, as she explores the life and work of Wilfred Bion. By delving into his biography, we will explore his psychoanalytic thinking, specifically his work on groups, his writing on psychosis and how his ideas evolved in later life.

Book your ticket here (under 'Apply'): https://www.psychoanalysis-bpa.org/training/pre-training/introductory-courses/

06/02/2026

Listen to the latest episode of Freud in Focus featuring artist Cathie Pilkington discussing her current exhibition 'Housekeeper' at the Freud Museum London:

In this episode, Tom is in conversation with artist Cathie Pilkington about her current exhibition Housekeeper at the Freud Museum.

02/02/2026

In this Wednesday's Introductory Lecture (4 February), BPA psychoanalyst Jayne Hankinson will offer a brief history of the development of the Independent group within the British school of psychoanalysis, focusing on what it might mean to be identified as an Independent. She will follow with an introduction to the work of Donald Winnicott and an overview of his contribution to the independent tradition and psychoanalysis as a whole.

Book your ticket here (under 'Apply'): https://www.psychoanalysis-bpa.org/training/pre-training/introductory-courses/

31/01/2026

“A saturated state is a state in which the conceptual or emotional object has absolute value, it is already stacked or closed to new meanings and therefore cannot undergo any kind of transformation. An unsaturated state, on the other hand, is a state in which the emotional or conceptual object is in an open state in which it is still open to transformation, to new meanings, to all kinds of change. What I think is interesting and important is to understand that one of the most difficult aims of working with traumatic objects is linked to this transformation from saturated to unsaturated states. Traumatic objects become fixed in a saturated state, which does not allow them to undergo any transformation within the psyche or within the therapeutic analytic process. The saturated state of traumatic events or objects is a frozen state in which therapy or analysis is used to preserve rather than intervene. This creates, in quite a few cases, a situation that I call false therapy or false analysis – a process, a therapeutic process in which very detailed materials are ostensibly presented, but in fact they are presented in a way that forces the therapist or to either swallow them as they are, or vomit them up but not digest them because they are presented in a way that does not tolerate any intervention, any other point of view, any creation of movement within the given frozen narrative.”

Listen here:

“A saturated state is a state in which the conceptual or emotional object has absolute value, it is already stacked or closed to new meanings and therefore cannot undergo any kind of transformation. An unsaturated state, on the other hand, is a state in which the emotional or conceptual object is ...

29/01/2026

*Last chance for Early Bird tickets*
Join us on Saturday, 7 March, for a one-day conference for those working psychoanalytically with children and adults

Programme:

- Maria Rhode | Introduction

- Judith Mitrani | Trying to enter the long black branches: Some technical extensions of the work of Frances Tustin for the analysis of autistic states in adults

- Masaaki Nishimura | Working on doubt in psychoanalytic psychotherapy with an autistic child: An exploration of being together

- Maria Rhode and Becky Hall | Early intervention for toddlers at risk of autism: Before and after observations and an audited case series

- Plenary discussion

Find out more here: https://www.psychoanalysis-bpa.org/events/bpa-scientific-conference-psychoanalysis-on-the-spectrum-encounters-with-primitive-mental-states/

27/01/2026

"Mark Solms’s latest book, a wide-ranging and engrossing defence of Freud as a scientist and a healer, is a striking contribution to the re-evaluation of a thinker whom WH Auden described as “no more a person now but a whole climate of opinion”.

Read the review of Mark Solms's 'The Only Cure' here:

An expert in both disciplines makes a bold attempt to convince sceptics, and partially succeeds

26/01/2026

There is sustained interest in the work of Melanie Klein and the post-Kleinians, who are particularly associated with British psychoanalysis. Sparked by working with very young children, Klein put forward evidence of the existence of a death instinct as well as a life instinct; she showed how thoughts and actions are shaped by unconscious phantasy and described the lifelong fluctuation between primitive states of mind and other states in which feelings of concern, remorse and guilt can be achieved.

In this Wednesday's (28 January) Introductory Lecture, BPA psychoanalyst Louise Hayman will touch on some of these key ideas and discuss them with participants.

Book your ticket here (under 'Apply'): https://www.psychoanalysis-bpa.org/training/pre-training/introductory-courses/

22/01/2026

Susie Orbach, psychotherapist, psychoanalyst and writer: "A good place to start is at the very beginning of life, allowing babies and parents to relish their hunger and the satisfaction of it. Anxiety too often infuses pregnancy, and the postpartum period can be fraught when it comes to nursing. Inadvertently, a new parent’s desire to get back into pre-pregnancy clothes and back to a measured kind of eating can make feeding oneself and feeding an infant fraught. The cycle of troubled eating and fear of one’s appetites begins very young."

The food, beauty and pharmaceutical industries poison our self-image. GLP-1 drugs will only make them richer – and strengthen the hold they have over us, says psychotherapist Susie Orbach

18/01/2026

Our next Introductory Lecture on Wednesday 21 January will focus on the theoretical models of the mind developed by Freud. The product of Freud’s painstaking attention to his patients, they are testimony to the major shifts in his thinking and remain fundamental to psychoanalysis today.

The lecture will provide a useful starting point and reference for anyone interested in reading Freud firsthand. Book your ticket here (under 'Apply'): https://www.psychoanalysis-bpa.org/training/pre-training/introductory-courses/

16/01/2026

Join us for our next event in the Poetic Mind series: 'What in Me is Dark? Paradise Lost and Psychoanalysis' online or in-person (London) on Saturday 31 January 2026.

Professor Orlando Reade will explore the psychological insights of John Milton’s Paradise Lost and its influence on psychoanalytic thinkers, including Freud, Jung, Melanie Klein and Jordan Peterson. The event will be chaired by David Howell Morgan.

Book your ticket here: https://www.psychoanalysis-bpa.org/events/bpa-event-the-poetic-mind-seminar-what-in-me-is-dark-paradise-lost-and-psychoanalysis/